Punk rock artifacts

50 years since the Ramones' first CBGB gig. Plus: a bunch of wildly rare ephemera

On August 16, 1974, the Ramones made their first appearance at a then-blossoming downtown dive called CBGB. “They were all wearing these black leather jackets. And they counted off this song … and it was just this wall of noise,” Legs McNeil would later recall. “This was something completely new.” To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of this landmark moment, THE BOWERY BOYS put together a delicious hour-and-five minutes of narrative audio for the podcasts’s latest episode, “The Ramones at CBGB: Revolution on the Bowery,” which you can listen to below.

After that inaugural CB’s performance, the Ramones appeared again the following night. On YouTube, there’s a thirty-six-second clip—apparently the earliest known Ramones footage—that was taped at one of those two historic shows (we don’t know which). The video isn’t embeddable, but click here to watch. And as a bonus, here’s a video of “Judy is a Punk” from a gig at CBGB just one month later.

Speaking of CBGB…

That’s a flyer for Blondie, when they were still called Blondie and the Banzai Babies, at 315 Bowery before it was called CBGB. It’s from the personal collection of Brian Gorsegner, which I checked out earlier this summer at the bungalow he shares with his wife and daughter down the Jersey Shore. Rare punk memorabilia like Gorsegner’s is now common in the Christie’s and Sotheby’s world. But Gorsegner has become arguably America’s most in-demand collector and dealer of this sort of stuff, which he exhibits and sells on the influential Instagram account @AncientArtifax.

I didn’t know Brian until recently, but we inhabit a common social network that stretches back to the late-’90s New Jersey punk scene. When he told me several months ago that he was doing an ANCIENT ARTIFAX coffee-table book, I smelled a fun story, which I pitched to an editor pal of mine at Town & Country and, voila:

At 240 pages, according to the catalog description, it “showcases unearthed punk rock artifacts from the 1970s and 1980s through hundreds of images and supporting commentary from those who witnessed the birth of a counter-culture first-hand.” 

These artifacts include a Ramones fanzine from 1980; an original press kit and promo poster for Penelope Spheeris’s landmark 1981 documentary The Decline of Western Civilization; the track listing for a mixtape compiled in 1979 by Dischord Records founder Ian MacKaye; handwritten correspondence from pioneers like Kid Congo Powers and Dave Grohl; an array of vintage clothing, buttons, and lyric sheets; and show flyers for bands ranging from the Cramps, the Dead Boys, the B-52’s, the Screamers, and the Misfits, to a deep bench of the first-wave American hardcore acts who are at the heart of the book: Black Flag, the Beastie Boys, Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Negative Approach, and so on. A pre-order ended up wiping out all 1,500 copies of the initial print run in four days, which immediately kicked off a second printing.

As Brian told me, reflecting on punk’s evolution as a luxury commodity, "This stuff was made by delinquent children, and now it will sell for $10,000." You can read the story, which T&C published last week, here. But before you do, check out a few more utterly wild pieces from Brian’s envy-inducing archive, like this lithograph Cramps poster circa 1979, another print of which resides at the Museum of Modern Art.

And this flyer for the Beastie Boys at the last-ever Max’s Kansas City show in 1981.

And this one for the Misfits at Max’s Kansas City on December 3, 1978, promoting the single for “Bullet.” The blood in the flyer’s artwork depicting the fatal moment was colored red by Glenn Danzig himself, according to Brian, who told me, “I don't doubt that I could get $20,000 for that poster.” (Sorry—not for sale!)

Do consider buying a copy of ANCIENT ARTIFAX, hot off the presses. And stayed tuned for more from me soon. Until then…